How Garage Beer is building its brand with no-holds-barred marketing

Garage Beer has been on a tear because it was relaunched firstly of 2023 by CEO Andy Sauer. Last summer saw the brand bring on Jason and Travis Kelce as investors, partners, owners and operators while sales volumes have grown over 460% within the last 52 weeks, per IRI data shared with Marketing Dive.

The football-playing Kelce brothers, who double as media stars and promoting darlings, have quickly grow to be the face of Garage Beer, especially Jason, who retired from the NFL in 2024 and pivoted to a profession in announcing.

In April, Jason starred in “Brewmite,” a humorous little bit of long-form content from Garage Beer that reimagined the martial arts movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s for the world of beer. Building on the success of the campaign, the brewer recently released a second installment of “Brewmite,” this time welcoming Travis and UFC legend Chuck Liddell to the dojo.

“Brewmite II” includes social and digital content, limited-edition merchandise (including a throwback VHS tape) and even a movie premiere-styled release party. The effort demonstrates how Garage Beer is utilizing each its famous co-owners and a no-holds-barred approach to marketing to form a more authentic connection with its audience, a technique paying homage to recent disruptor success stories from Liquid Death and Dr. Squatch.

“The brand stands on its own at this point, from a tone of voice and an aesthetic,” said Garage Beer Chief Creative Officer Corey Smale. “We have already got a fairly good fire going, after which the Kelces back up a tank of gas on it.”

Understanding audiences

Garage Beer’s latest “Brewmite” comes because the brand sees more mileage to derive from the concept. Plus, shooting around Travis’ schedule is all the time difficult, because the 35-year-old prepares for the NFL season, amongst other commitments. But the larger effort also demonstrates how Garage Beer’s marketing is evolving, even when a few of its ideas begin as riffs between Jason and the brand’s team.

“The undeniable fact that it might probably go from there to being a movie and an actual event with a VHS tape is a testament to our team. We’re still a really, very small brand and team, however the those who we’ve are all the time doing a variety of stuff,” Smale explained. “We all the time need to tie [together] real life and online as much as possible.”

Smale attributes the resonance of Garage Beer’s brand marketing to being one with its audience, with shared interests around martial arts parodies, beer-filled waterbeds and even pro wrestling. During his time as brand director at Pabst Blue Ribbon, Smale helped embed the brand in pro wrestling, including running TV ads and sponsoring a podcast about wrestling toys. When the podcast’s deal with PBR ended, it tapped Garage Beer as a sponsor — a move Smale said speaks to the ability of micro area of interest interests.

“I feel it’s cool to indicate audiences, ‘Dude, we’re you,’” Smale said. “That’s hard to drag off, unless you actually are a fan.”

Small brand, area of interest interests

The podcast partnership has led to additional content and brand opportunities, like sponsoring a world title match and featuring a green-haired wrestler in a campaign video across the brewer’s green-canned lime beer. For a small brand like Garage Beer, marketing requires agility and ease, sometimes without the contracts required by big brands and influencers.

“It’s a bit bit out of necessity,” Smale said. “I don’t have money to sponsor WWE or AEW [All Elite Wrestling], but I do know methods to get into an element of that world and grow it.”

As Garage Beer expands, so does its must move into other cultural cul de sacs. The company on Aug. 11 announced a partnership with illustrator Tim Jacobus — best known for his iconic “Goosebumps” covers — for a Halloween-themed effort, “Garage Fear.”

The effort spans packaging (featuring Jason alongside a personality resembling an eponymous horror icon), an adult comic book limited to 100 copies, a forthcoming animated short and a pop-up at a haunted house in St. Louis, Missouri. Marketing materials position “Garage Fear” as helping consumers who’re “anxious about having to ingest pumpkin beer this fall” and “So good, it’s literally striking fear into the seltzer industry.”

That form of horror-themed, competitive marketing recalls the success of Liquid Death, a brand Smale worked on for a 12 months at agency Party Land.

“What Liquid Death has done will probably be a case study for generations,” Smale said. “That we will even be mentioned in the identical [breath], that’s so cool for me.”